Page 1 of Entwined in Norway

1

It was Ida Larsen’s favourite time of day. In June, on the island in Radfjorden near Bergen, there was almost no darkness, only a twilight that lasted for a handful of hours. After a long day at work, Ida sat on the veranda of the farmhouse, although it was officially a hotel now, and sipped from her mug of chamomile tea, enjoying the stillness of everything now that most of the guests were in bed. The area around the hotel building was lush green grass, with a wood-chip path edged with rocks leading the way through the woods to the jetty, the nearest tip of the island to the mainland. At night, storm lanterns lit the path. Trees surrounded the clearing, mostly Nordic spruce, that towered above the old farmhouse, their trunks thick and bare of branches for a few metres in some cases, before they almost joined as one canopy higher up. Even now, in the twilight, Ida could see the tops of the mountains behind the trees, soaring upward from the depths of the fjords, making the island feel insignificant, but protected.

Lysgården was her older brother Mats’ island hotel. When he embarked on this project to turn the farm he, Ida and their siblings had inherited, she thought he was crazy and would have nothing to do with it. Slowly, over the past year, she’d seen how much this place meant to him and how hard he’d worked to make his dream a reality, putting everything he had, literally every penny, into transforming it from an abandoned farmhouse into a luxury hotel retreat.

Ida never expected to change her mind, but when Mats and his partner, Lotta, moved into the family home with her, it was hard not to be caught up in the excitement of the project. Gradually she had helped out here and there and then accepted the job as hotel manager when Mats and Lotta had suggested it. Working with her brother was a delight. A fact that constantly surprised her.

It also surprised her how much she loved living on the island. What had started as a practical solution to dealing with a late guest arrival a few weeks ago, now saw Ida living out of the smallest guest room in the hotel which, so far, being a less popular single room, had not been needed. Being away from the family home in Loddefjord for the first time in years was freeing. It made her realise how stuck she’d been since her mother had died, closely followed by her father. She’d lost herself for a while and, not that she’d admit it to Mats, working at the hotel had given her a new lease of life.

‘You okay to lock up, Ida?’ Magnus, one of their three duty managers who was on the late shift today, came out of the main door on his way home. Ida was the only person who stayed on the island overnight. Only ten minutes from Bergen by boat, the staff either had a boat of their own or came over on the island’s shuttle boat service.

‘Sure,’ she smiled. ‘See you tomorrow.’ There was no locking up necessary, just a quick check that everything was in order. The next duty manager would be back early in the morning, and the guests could call the twenty-four hour phone number if there was a problem in the meantime. The call went through to either Mats or Ida, depending on whose turn it was, but while she was on the island anyway, she’d been routing the calls to her phone to give Mats a break. Not that she’d had a call at all yet.

Ida finished her tea and went back inside. They never locked the front door; there was no need. She turned the lights off in the hallway, leaving on only the chandelier that hung all the way from the third floor down to the first, through the galleried landings. It cast a beautiful light, and at night it was just enough to gently illuminate the hall and stairs with its spiral of smooth teardrop-shaped crystals. In the daytime, when the sun was high enough in the sky to pour through the windows on either side of the door, its reflection threw small rainbows across the walls. Ida wasn’t sure if Becca, who had designed the interiors and bought the chandelier before the building work had even started, knew that would happen, but it was one of Ida’s favourite things about the hotel. She wondered for how many months they could enjoy the rainbows before the weak winter sun made them disappear.

After a quick walk through all the downstairs rooms, Ida headed up to the top floor where room 308 was tucked in the corner of the roof. The ceiling sloped down on one side, and a small window overlooked the side of the fjord that faced the mountains. What the room lacked in space, it more than made up for with the view. She had a small en-suite bathroom with a shower that was tucked in the eaves. It wouldn’t be suitable for anyone much taller than her, but it still had the luxurious feel that the rest of the hotel had. The room was beautifully decorated with warm white tones, fresh white bed linen, and a thick-pile wool carpet in deep charcoal. The wooden bed frame was whitewashed so that the wood grain was still visible, and there were matching bedside tables. A lamp on either side provided enough light to read by and made the room feel cosy at night, and the pièce de résistance in every bedroom was an artwork by Oda Bjerk. Oda was a specialist in the Norwegian art of rosemaling, painting traditional folk art flowers and other designs on wood. For the Lysgården hotel, she had cut stylised flowers and leaves from thin wooden sheet, painted them in beautiful muted colours, and then they’d been stuck to the wall and she’d hand-painted green vines between them. Each bedroom had a slightly different design, and it was almost the only pop of colour in any of the rooms.

Another quirky addition to each room was that each had one troll that Ida had rescued from the farmhouse before the renovation. Her grandmother had had a vast collection of them, packed together on a shelf that ran around the dining room. Mats had been all for getting rid of them, but Lotta had agreed that having one in each room was a nod to the history of the house.

Ida undressed and snuggled into bed. It was another reason she loved it here because at home she still had the same bed she’d had since she was a teenager and had never thought to do anything about it. She vowed that when she had to live there again, because there would come a point where the hotel got busier and this room would be needed, she would treat herself to a new bed.

Her phone buzzed with a message.

Fredrik: Just checking you can still collect Emil from school tomorrow?

Ida: You think I would forget my favourite nephew?

In fact, to her shame, she had forgotten. There was a reminder on her phone so at some point tomorrow she would have been alerted and not left Emil standing at the school gate, but she was still adjusting to juggling her old life and her new one. And she wasn’t very good at it yet.

Fredrik: Thanks Ida. I’ll see you at the house around nine.

She sighed. So much for not needing to sleep at home for a while. She was going to be back there tomorrow night. If Fredrik wasn’t coming round until nine, that was code for the fact Emil would need to stay over.

She hearted his message and turned the light off, determined to enjoy sleeping in this bed for one more night.

The following morning was warm but a little dull, with a low mist sitting over the fjord that was almost like a drizzle. It wasn’t unusual weather for this part of Norway. Most people who lived in Bergen complained about how much it rained; it was just a part of life. But at least in June, there was always the promise that it could turn into a sunny day.

Ida walked through the dining room, greeting guests who were enjoying a leisurely breakfast before she went into the kitchen in search of her own breakfast.

‘Morning!’

‘Morning, Ida,’ said the head chef, Heidi. ‘There is yogurt and fruit over there,’ she said, pointing to the stainless steel bench on the other side of the kitchen.

‘Thank you. Any pastries left?’

‘I’ve got some here,’ said Jan. He was Heidi’s assistant. He had no experience but was keen to learn and had a real flair for cooking the traditional Nordic food the hotel had become known for, and he loved baking. Over the past months, before the hotel opened, Mats and Lotta ran a pop-up restaurant on a couple of evenings a week, where Heidi had made a real name for them locally as a high-quality restaurant serving good home-cooked food. It had helped enormously in spreading the word about the hotel and had led to a waiting list of people wanting to stay there once it opened.

Ida made herself a coffee and carried her breakfast out into the hallway where the reception desk was situated, tucked under the stairs a little so Ida could eat with no one seeing. She knew Mats wouldn’t approve. He would have told her to sit in the office, but it was his day off, and she wanted to check the booking system before the day got away from her.

‘Eating at the reception desk, Ida…’

She jumped and then grinned at Emilie, one of the duty managers who was on shift for the first half of the day.

‘I’m not getting any crumbs in the keyboard,’ she said.

‘How was yesterday?’

‘Fine. I managed to arrange a guide for the group who want to go on a hike this afternoon, although whether they will still want to do that if the mist is down, I don’t know.’